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There is a wall that can rise around one who has drifted from his Lord. It is built up by an irreverent habit of mind. A familiar, casual naming of the Name that is above every name must grieve the Holy Spirit, of whom it is written, “He shall glorify Me.” The grieved Spirit always withdraws from the soul that is careless about grieving Him, and He will not return till that soul is on its knees. Till then it will be within walls and it will find no window.
Or the wall may be solid all around us because of our neglect of the Scriptures, and by much dealing in books “limed with the mixture of the syllables” of His name like the talk of certain men of whom St. Augustine wrote. He wrote also of the books that he had read in his search for truth, many and huge books: “And these were the dishes wherein to me, hungering after Thee, they, instead of Thee, served up the Sun and Moon, beautiful works of Thine, but yet Thy works, not Thyself.”
Those dishes, glittering fantasies “which by our eyes deceive our mind,” were set before him, much as they are set before us now. He might indeed be writing of some of our books, which offer us only “beautiful works,” not the Lord of Life Himself. “Yet because I thought them to be Thee, I fed thereon; not eagerly, for Thou didst not in them taste to me as Thou art; for Thou wast not these emptinesses, nor was I nourished by them, but exhausted rather. Food in sleep shows very like our food awake; yet those asleep are not nourished by it, for they are asleep. But those were not even any way like to Thee, as Thou hast now spoken to me.” Many a disenchanted reader has echoed those words: Those books are not even any way like to Thee, as Thou hast now spoken to me, O Jesus, Lover of souls.
And so there are walls of doubt and of distress of mind that need not be. To lose one’s spiritual liberty is a deadly thing. To stay within those walls is death. “Never let what you know be disturbed by what you do not know.” “You have eaten too much of the tree of knowledge” (often falsely so called); “eat more of the tree of life,” said an old minister to a younger one who had lost his first love.
Turn from the glittering fantasies and the lure of smooth language. Read that Book the sum of whose words is Truth. Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. Those words will open a window that no blast of hell can shut; we shall fly like a bird through our window then; our soul will know the freedom of the woods. But we need to be very simple and humble if we are to find that window.